“And what can I do for you, Uncle Dan’l?” was the cordial greeting.
The old man dropped heavily into the chair set out for him. He was out of breath from his rapid going.
“You can do me one of the biggest favors I ever asked of anybody if you only will. Do you remember a sealed envelope I brought in here the first of the summer and asked you to keep for me till I called for it?”
“Yes, do you want it now?”
“I’m going to show you what’s in it.”
He had such an air of suppressed excitement as he said it and his breathing was so labored, that Mr. Gates wondered what could have happened to affect him so. When he came back from the vault he carried the envelope which had been left in his charge earlier in the summer. Uncle Darcy tore it open with fingers that trembled in their eagerness.
“What I’m about to show you is for your eyes alone,” he said. He took out a crumpled sheet of paper which had once been torn in two and pasted together again in clumsy fashion. It was the paper which had been wadded up in the rifle, which Belle had seized with hysterical fury, torn in two and flung from her.
“There! Read that!” he commanded.
Mr. Gates knew everybody in town. He had been one of the leading citizens who had subscribed to the monument in Emmett Potter’s honor. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes as he read the confession thrust into his hands, and he had never been more surprised at any tale ever told him than the one Uncle Darcy related now of the way it had been found, and his promise to Belle Triplett.
“I’m not going to make it public while old Potter hangs on,” he said in conclusion. “I’ll wait till he’s past feeling the hurts of earth. But Mr. Gates, I’ve had word that my Danny’s coming home. I can’t let the boy come back to dark looks and cold shoulders turned on him everywhere. I thought if you’d just start the word around that he’s all right--that somebody else confessed to what he’s accused of--that you’d seen the proof with your own eyes and could vouch for his being all right--if _you’d_ just give him a welcoming hand and show you believed in him it would make all the difference in the world in Danny’s home-coming. You needn’t mention any names,” he pleaded. “I know it’ll make a lot of talk and surmising, but that won’t hurt anybody. If you could just do that----”